Alright or All Right?

During one of my evening writing sessions, one of my characters said, “Alright!” A few lines later, I looked back and wondered whether I should have written, “All right!” My spellchecker had not underlined the word, but it didn’t feel altogether proper.

The more I thought about it, it seemed to me that the word alright had a different meaning from the phrase all right. For example:

“How is it?”

“It’s alright.”

Compared to this:

“Did you check my answers?”

“Yes. They were all right.”

Since the flow of my writing had already been interrupted, I decided to do some research. Here is what I found:

Meanwhile, my music player randomly queued up It’s Alright from Huey Lewis and the News’ Greatest Hits compilation. (Don’t you love serendipity?) As I listened to them snap their fingers and sing a cappella, I recalled they had another song also on the same album named But It’s Alright. Someday I think it may be all right to use alright.